End of another great year in Piwakawaka

 This is the link to our End of Year video.  Enjoy!

Beach Clean Up

 On a not so great West Coast Day Piwakawaka and the Crusaders Enviroschools leaders went to the Hokitka beach to conduct the Sustainable Coastlines Litter Intelligence Survey.  Whilst the Crusaders leaders worked with Emma Hunter from Sustaibale Coastlines on the Litter Intelligence Survey Piwakawaka did a beach clean up. 

The Litter intellligence survey requires us, along with Hokitika Primary and St Mary's, to survey the same 100metres of the beach and add our findings to the Sustainable Coastlines data base. We found 14 pieces of litter, categorised them, weighed them and added the information to the data base.

Along the beach we found five bags full of various litter including china plate pieces, plastic, drink bottles, wrappers, shoe inners, cartridges form fire arms and more. We bought this back to school to dispose of. Thanks to all the wonderful parents that supported us.

Korfball

 Torsten came and gave us Korfball lessons today. Korfball is a cross between netball and basketball. There are eight players on each team. Teams are mixed. It is very fast. The rules are pretty simple apart form the new one we learnt today about being either on defence or attack, and swapping our role after two goals were scored.

Our school now has it's own equipment so we are going to be able to practice regulary. 

We can also attend Korfball camps to improve our skills. There is a tournament for Year 5 and 6 students. We are really excited tot think that next year we could be playing in this tournament. Her eis some of the action!

Have you ever tried a new sport like Korfball?

We made it to silver for Enviroschools

 We made it! Kaniere School has earned their Silver Enviroschools status, the first in Westland. It was a lot of hard work. Our Crusaders representatives Zoe Adlington, Elizabeth Olson and Isla Martin stepped up becuase our senior leaders were away at camp. They gave Regional co-ordinator Zoe Watson a tour of our school, after welcoming her along with their Piwakawaka classmates, and talked about all the projects wer have worked on since becoming an Enviroschool in 2010. 

On the last day of term we had a big celebration with Fiona from the Department of Conservation presenting the Crusaders team with the Silver Certificate.  Our leaders gave tours to parents and we had a shared lunch.

We planted a Rata tree to mark the ocassion. Teno pai Kaniere!

Energy!

 Piwakawaka have been studying energy. Thi has included personal energy and solar energy. We created  exercise programmes, solar ovens and wrote explanations. Our solar ovens were used to cook Somores for the class, YUM! We have also learnt about energy in space, learning about aurora!

Spring has sprung!

Every year the ASB Bank in Hokitika has a window display to support Daffodil Day. If you don't know Daffodil Day is a fundraiser for cancer research in New Zealand. On Friday the class created some daffodils to use in the window display. We had a whole patch... so hopefully the window will be a riot ofcolour. We are definitely feeling the spring vibe in class.

Visit from the Health Nurse

Our local Health Nurse visited Piwakawaka Last week. Stephanie talked to us about washing our hands properly so we can aviod catching viruses. Before we eat we need to santise or wash our hands. We all lined up in groups to practice washing our hands. Stephanie had sprayed some pretend virus on them, then we washed and dried our hands. Stephanie then checked using an ultra violet light to see how clean our hands actually were.  THe Ultra violet light shows germ areas as white and the claen areas purple.

When it wasn't our turn we watched some Nano Girl videos our viruses and how to stop them sticking to our skin. There was a very simple experiment where you float cinnimon or pepper on a bowl of water. First you dip your finger in the water and all the 'germs' stick to the skin. then you drop a couple of drops of dish degerent into the water and watch as it repels the 'germs'. This shows us we need to use soap. Wateris not enough to clean our hands. 

Cross Country

The day dawned clear. There was a cold, but gentle zephyr, blowing from the east. We had waited so long for the weather to clear We did not mind, we were excited. Ten o'clock came and the boys lined up ready for Mrs King to start them. Three laps of our course lay before us. Mrs King maked out the track that took us up into the fort, then along the cycle trail. It was great to have the parents able to join us. 

We do cross country every year. It helps improve our fitness levels and in year 5 and six we can go to the district and regoional cross country if we make the top finishers. 

Cross country is exciting, challenging and nerve racking, all at the same time. All of us finished the course, which means we can all feel proud of our effort. There were a few tired bodies at the end so it was a good thing it was Friday and we could cruise an bit for the rest of the day.

Showing Kaitiakitanga

 Today we did some preventative maintenance on the school bikes. We are very lucky that we have bikes the whole school can use on our cycle track. It saves parents having to bring bikes from home. However they do get a hard life. We need to clean the grease and grime off them regularly from the grit that is on the track. Then we re-oil the chains, check the brakes and gear cables for damage. It can be very time consuming. They are good skills to learn because we can  maintain our own bikes at home and we are showing Kaitiakitanga.

Athletics

                          

Today was our school athletics day. We moved between field events in our year group. We had two throwing events, shot put and discus, two jumping events, high jump and long jump. We could do our 60m sprint but our longer running races are going to be in town because we don’t have a track long enough at school that we can use. 

Trevor, our caretaker, came and helped us with measuring and marking out the circles for shot put and discus. 

Cursive Writing Name Art

 To start the year we created artworks using cursive writing. Our maths focus was reflection. First we folded our page in half, and wrote our name in pencil using cursive (joined up) writing. We then put it on the window so we could copy it to the side of our page. Looking very carefully at our writing we decided how we were going to turn this into an alien.After going over our writing with a vivid we added extra detail making sure whatever we did on one side was copied to the other side. Lastly we coloured in the spaces and created our cursive writing name art.

   

Nelson Giants

Two players from the Nelson Giants Basketball team came to Kaniere to promote after school basketball. They showed us their great ball skills and played games with us. The whole school joined in.

 

Safe Cycling

 Constable Paul came to talk about cycle safety with us. We are all riding bikes, some of us to school, so we need to know how to do this safely. We had an in class session where we learnt about where to position ourselves on the road, and what signals we need to make, and how to ensure our helmet was safe to use.

Our next session was on the turf. Constable Terri came to help. We practiced signaling, braking and bike control. Finally we had an obstacle course to negotiate.

Korfball

Today we had Tristan come into school and teach us Korfball. Korfball is a mixture between netball and basketball. There are four main rules: if you have the ball you can pivot, but not step, teams must be mixed, if you are within shoulder tapping distance and between the ball and the hoop the person with the ball must pass, boys can only guard  boys and girls can only guard girls. You can shoot from anywhere on the court.

They are holding korfball camps over the holidays for people to learn the game. Hopefully there will be a league between schools that play. Have you ever heard of, or played this sport?

A Day in the Life of Piwakawaka

 For your viewing pleasure Piwakawaka have created this sneak peek into our classroom life. Enjoy!

Cricket with Tommy

 Today we had the opportunity to sharpen up our cricket skills with Tommy. We played games to warm up, then we did some catching drills. After that we practiced our bowling and throwing before playing non stop cricket. It was a great way to start the day. Thanks Tommy.

Passports

We made passports for our princpal. We make these so our principal can get to know us better. We made our passports on google slides. They had to include our name, our class, hapu, an image of ourselves, our age, our hobbies and our pets. 

We made them in google slides, but Mrs King prints them to go on the wall in her office. We learnt how to take a screen shot and how to use different backgrounds. Some of us learnt to put a picture into a shape. We are pretty proud of our work.